Bloomberg says Trump should ‘stop tweeting’ and let Russia probe run its course

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Trump. (Photo-illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Christophe Ena/AP, Evan Vucci/AP)

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has some advice for President Trump: Stop tweeting and do your job.

During a Tuesday evening appearance on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Bloomberg was asked about the probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. The inquiry has reportedly expanded to seek to determine whether Trump committed obstruction of justice by firing FBI Director James Comey.

Conceding he doesn’t know “whether there’s any there there,” Bloomberg nonetheless praised the appointment of a special prosecutor to handle the investigation.

“When there’s an allegation, you have to have a competent, independent investigation that will either find something wrong or remove the cloud,” Bloomberg said.

“Having said that, the president just has to get it out of his mind, stop tweeting and focus on running the government and letting the investigation go on,” he later added.

Trump has frequently utilized Twitter, his favorite communications medium, to attempt to delegitimize the Russia probe, repeatedly calling it a “witch hunt.” Those angry missives intensified after the Washington Post reported the investigation would look into Trump’s interactions with Comey before his firing.

Bloomberg, a billionaire who has made climate change one of his pet causes, was on CNN to promote a new documentary about the negative effects of coal. He called Trump’s skepticism of climate change “just embarrassing” and said while the Trump administration’s plan to withdraw from the Paris accord was not “a disaster for the world,” it nevertheless makes America “look foolish.”

Despite the barbs he slung at Trump, Bloomberg also called his former constituent “a very nice guy” (albeit one he doesn’t believe is fit for the presidency), and was only lukewarm toward Trump’s former opponent Hillary Clinton, despite speaking on her behalf at the Democratic National Convention.

Contending Clinton “would have been a decent president,” Bloomberg said her messaging never provided a compelling rationale as to why she should be elected.